Hence it has an air of
elegance, seldom to be found in a commercial, and never in a
manufacturing town; and to us this appearance was the more striking, as
being the first instance of the kind we had seen in Normandy. The
streets are broad and beautifully neat. The city stands in the midst of
gardens and orchards, in a fertile valley, watered by the Iton, and
inclosed towards the north and south by ranges of hills. The river
divides into two branches before it reaches the town, both which flow on
the outside of the walls. But, besides these, a portion of its waters
has been conducted through the centre of the city, by means of a canal
dug by the order of Jane of Navarre. This Iton, like the Mole, in Kent,
suddenly loses itself in the ground, near the little town of Damville,
about twenty miles south of Evreux, and holds its subterranean course
for nearly two miles. A similar phenomenon is observable with a
neighboring stream, the Risle, between Ferriere and Grammont[46]: in
both cases it is attributed, I know not with what justice, to an abrupt
change in the stratification of the soil.
* * * * *
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 36: This curious transaction, which took place in the year
1119, is related with considerable _naeivete_ by Ordericus Vitalis, p.
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